Heroes Season One
Sep. 18th, 2007 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bagheera_sanI just finished watching Season one of Heroes. That was some damn entertaining television :D
I stopped watching it after mid-season break and only got to watch the rest now. I sort of lost interest in between, not because the show was bad or anything, just the burning need to know how it goes on, to meet the characters again, that special feeling that makes television shows so irresistible, wasn't quite there. That's the one problem with the show: it doesn't really have that. I feel more fannish about it now than after the first half, though.
Favourite Characters
I'm a character person, if a show doesn't have at least two characters I find awesome, I have no use for it. Heroes has a whole bunch of them, though :D
Invisible Man (Christopher Eccleston... is that how you spell it?)
I didn't even catch his name, but he ruled. ETA: apparently, his name is Claude! I love the British accent, and I love his attitude. The way he bitchslapped Peter around was just awesome, and the backstory with Mr Bennet - yay. I want to see more of him.
Mr Bennet
Badass. The most relatable, complex and engaging character of the show. He had sort of a Giles-y vibe. "Company Man" is my favourite episode, I think, and the two scenes with him on the bridge (with Invisible Man and the Haitian) were just intense. Now this is how you do a villain/antihero, okay?
George Takei (I mean, Mr. Nakamura. But I sort of couldn't get over the fact that George Takei suddenly popped up, speaking Japanese!)
Every scene with him was gold.
Hiro&Ando
First of all: Japanese with subtitles! Eeee, I love listening to that language. (God, I wish I had watched this show two years ago, I might've studied Japanese instead.) Anyways, is it just me or was Hiro/Ando text? I mean, Ando's skirt-chasing was hilarious, but they were totally soulmates. Aside from that, these two were just a big damn geeky bundle of fun.
Sylar
He didn't do it much for me until we got his backstory with Prof. Suresh and the episodes where he was impersonating Zane. By the end, I actually found him kind of cute in a serial killer-y way. Too bad I read him as an entirely asexual person, or I'd be writing Sylar/Mohinder XD
Claire
She had a serious Buffy vibe, what with the badass blonde highschool student. Her Mom looked like Joyce, too. She started out as my favourite character, but I liked Claire considerably less towards the end of the season, although she was still ridiculously beautiful.
Characters that were fun to watch but not overwhelming
Mohinder
Well, he is pretty. And I like to hear him talk. His scenes with Sylar (I just wanted to add Future Nathan, but that was Sylar, too...*g*)were great, everything else tended more towards meh. But a lot of his story arc was completely dragged-out.
Nathan
I found him very hard to relate to, but the actor did great.
Issac
Same as Mohinder: very pretty. And I have a kink for drug addict characters.
Mrs Bennet & Mr. Muggles
What became of her? I suppose we'll find out in S2. Anyways, she cracked me up, because at times my Mom is almost as obsessed with our dog.
The Haitian
He was appropriately charismatic, and I'd love to learn more about him.
Zach
I loved his scenes with Claire early on.
Ted the almost-exploding-man
He turned out the be sorta nice. Too bad Sylar got him.
Meh Characters
Niki, DL, Micah
The whole Niki-Jessica thing just sort of bored me. Micah was cute in some scenes, but I expected a bit more boy genius from him.
Linderman
Blah. All that build up, and then the characters was deeply boring.
Matt Parkman
At first he was boring, then he got annoying. I liked his interaction with Blonde Lady Cop.
Peter
He was *supposed* to be seriously lame, right? God, but he was a whiny bitch. Invisible Man was right, particularly about Peter's stupid hair.
Simone
Dead boring stock character "The Girlfriend"
What I liked most about the show was the fast pace and the many twists, particularly the interconnectedness of the characters and storylines. Almost everyone met everyone else. (Highlights always were Nathan - Hiro meetings. Flying Man!) I also liked that it had the guts to tackle some topics like terrorism, 9/11 and the scare-tactics of the US government. Whether it dealt well with those topics or not, for a genre show I consider it an achievement to tackle issues at all. (I'm looking at you, SV.) It was fun, but it took itself seriously - very much like a good comic. It only got bad when it took itself too seriously.
Fanfic Potential
Well, I'd like to try my hand at Peter/Invisible Man. Not in a fluffy way, though. Which means I have to find out Invisible Man's name first, and of course I'd have to emulate his rather distinct speech patterns... I'd also like to try Sylar/Mohinder. Or future Sylar-as-Nathan/Mohinder.
Quibbles
One more mention of "God" and "Destiny", and I was gonna have a fit. (This might sound funny coming from a Smallville fan, but Smallville is set, I've said this a hundred times, in a deterministic universe. It makes sense to talk of destiny.) Seriously, they laid it on too thickly. Is Heroes a show about evolution? Or is it really a show about intelligent design?
It's not that I can't deal with religion in my television, it's that mix of science and religion that rubs me the wrong way. Particularly when it's comic book pseudo science.
The ending was completely predictable. From the first vision Peter had of himself exploding, I wondered why Nathan didn't simply grab him and fly away. Half the people present at the final showdown felt sort of redundant. And how the hell do you continue a show like this? Heroes has set itself up for a huge task, I'm not sure they can deliver.
Except then there was Hiro and a bunch of Samurai. That made it all good again :D
I stopped watching it after mid-season break and only got to watch the rest now. I sort of lost interest in between, not because the show was bad or anything, just the burning need to know how it goes on, to meet the characters again, that special feeling that makes television shows so irresistible, wasn't quite there. That's the one problem with the show: it doesn't really have that. I feel more fannish about it now than after the first half, though.
Favourite Characters
I'm a character person, if a show doesn't have at least two characters I find awesome, I have no use for it. Heroes has a whole bunch of them, though :D
Invisible Man (Christopher Eccleston... is that how you spell it?)
I didn't even catch his name, but he ruled. ETA: apparently, his name is Claude! I love the British accent, and I love his attitude. The way he bitchslapped Peter around was just awesome, and the backstory with Mr Bennet - yay. I want to see more of him.
Mr Bennet
Badass. The most relatable, complex and engaging character of the show. He had sort of a Giles-y vibe. "Company Man" is my favourite episode, I think, and the two scenes with him on the bridge (with Invisible Man and the Haitian) were just intense. Now this is how you do a villain/antihero, okay?
George Takei (I mean, Mr. Nakamura. But I sort of couldn't get over the fact that George Takei suddenly popped up, speaking Japanese!)
Every scene with him was gold.
Hiro&Ando
First of all: Japanese with subtitles! Eeee, I love listening to that language. (God, I wish I had watched this show two years ago, I might've studied Japanese instead.) Anyways, is it just me or was Hiro/Ando text? I mean, Ando's skirt-chasing was hilarious, but they were totally soulmates. Aside from that, these two were just a big damn geeky bundle of fun.
Sylar
He didn't do it much for me until we got his backstory with Prof. Suresh and the episodes where he was impersonating Zane. By the end, I actually found him kind of cute in a serial killer-y way. Too bad I read him as an entirely asexual person, or I'd be writing Sylar/Mohinder XD
Claire
She had a serious Buffy vibe, what with the badass blonde highschool student. Her Mom looked like Joyce, too. She started out as my favourite character, but I liked Claire considerably less towards the end of the season, although she was still ridiculously beautiful.
Characters that were fun to watch but not overwhelming
Mohinder
Well, he is pretty. And I like to hear him talk. His scenes with Sylar (I just wanted to add Future Nathan, but that was Sylar, too...*g*)were great, everything else tended more towards meh. But a lot of his story arc was completely dragged-out.
Nathan
I found him very hard to relate to, but the actor did great.
Issac
Same as Mohinder: very pretty. And I have a kink for drug addict characters.
Mrs Bennet & Mr. Muggles
What became of her? I suppose we'll find out in S2. Anyways, she cracked me up, because at times my Mom is almost as obsessed with our dog.
The Haitian
He was appropriately charismatic, and I'd love to learn more about him.
Zach
I loved his scenes with Claire early on.
Ted the almost-exploding-man
He turned out the be sorta nice. Too bad Sylar got him.
Meh Characters
Niki, DL, Micah
The whole Niki-Jessica thing just sort of bored me. Micah was cute in some scenes, but I expected a bit more boy genius from him.
Linderman
Blah. All that build up, and then the characters was deeply boring.
Matt Parkman
At first he was boring, then he got annoying. I liked his interaction with Blonde Lady Cop.
Peter
He was *supposed* to be seriously lame, right? God, but he was a whiny bitch. Invisible Man was right, particularly about Peter's stupid hair.
Simone
Dead boring stock character "The Girlfriend"
What I liked most about the show was the fast pace and the many twists, particularly the interconnectedness of the characters and storylines. Almost everyone met everyone else. (Highlights always were Nathan - Hiro meetings. Flying Man!) I also liked that it had the guts to tackle some topics like terrorism, 9/11 and the scare-tactics of the US government. Whether it dealt well with those topics or not, for a genre show I consider it an achievement to tackle issues at all. (I'm looking at you, SV.) It was fun, but it took itself seriously - very much like a good comic. It only got bad when it took itself too seriously.
Fanfic Potential
Well, I'd like to try my hand at Peter/Invisible Man. Not in a fluffy way, though. Which means I have to find out Invisible Man's name first, and of course I'd have to emulate his rather distinct speech patterns... I'd also like to try Sylar/Mohinder. Or future Sylar-as-Nathan/Mohinder.
Quibbles
One more mention of "God" and "Destiny", and I was gonna have a fit. (This might sound funny coming from a Smallville fan, but Smallville is set, I've said this a hundred times, in a deterministic universe. It makes sense to talk of destiny.) Seriously, they laid it on too thickly. Is Heroes a show about evolution? Or is it really a show about intelligent design?
It's not that I can't deal with religion in my television, it's that mix of science and religion that rubs me the wrong way. Particularly when it's comic book pseudo science.
The ending was completely predictable. From the first vision Peter had of himself exploding, I wondered why Nathan didn't simply grab him and fly away. Half the people present at the final showdown felt sort of redundant. And how the hell do you continue a show like this? Heroes has set itself up for a huge task, I'm not sure they can deliver.
Except then there was Hiro and a bunch of Samurai. That made it all good again :D
